5.3.1. Installation of Binutils

It is important that Binutils be the first package compiled because
both Glibc and GCC perform various tests on the available linker
and assembler to determine which of their own features to enable.

This package is known to have issues when its default optimization
flags (including the -march and
-mcpu options) are changed. If
any environment variables that override default optimizations have
been defined, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, unset them when building Binutils.

If you are building from a host running Gcc-4 or later, it is
necessary to patch the first build of this version of Binutils so
that it can be compiled by the host system.

patch -Np1 -i ../binutils-2.15.94.0.2.2-gcc4-1.patch

The Binutils documentation recommends building Binutils outside of
the source directory in a dedicated build directory:

mkdir -v ../binutils-build
cd ../binutils-build

Note

In order for the SBU values listed in the rest of the book to
be of any use, measure the time it takes to build this package
from the configuration, up to and including the first install.
To achieve this easily, wrap the three commands in a
time command like
this: time { ./configure ...
&& make && make install; }.

Now prepare Binutils for compilation:

../binutils-2.15.94.0.2.2/configure --prefix=/tools --disable-nls

The meaning of the configure options:

--prefix=/tools

This tells the configure script to prepare to install the
Binutils programs in the /tools
directory.

--disable-nls

This disables internationalization as i18n is not needed for
the temporary tools.

Continue with compiling the package:

make

Compilation is now complete. Ordinarily we would now run the test
suite, but at this early stage the test suite framework (Tcl,
Expect, and DejaGNU) is not yet in place. The benefits of running
the tests at this point are minimal since the programs from this
first pass will soon be replaced by those from the second.

Install the package:

make install

Next, prepare the linker for the “Adjusting” phase later on:

make -C ld clean
make -C ld LIB_PATH=/tools/lib

The meaning of the make parameters:

-C ld
clean

This tells the make program to remove all compiled files in
the ld subdirectory.

-C ld
LIB_PATH=/tools/lib

This option rebuilds everything in the ld subdirectory. Specifying the LIB_PATH Makefile variable on the command line
allows us to override the default value and point it to the
temporary tools location. The value of this variable
specifies the linker's default library search path. This
preparation is used later in the chapter.

Warning

Do not remove the
Binutils build and source directories yet. These will be needed
again in their current state later in this chapter.